Ouster, a U.S. startup that makes lidar sensors for self-driving automotives and good cities, mentioned on Tuesday it has agreed to go public by way of a merger with particular goal acquisition firm (SPAC) Colonnade Acquisition Corp.
The deal values San Francisco-based Ouster at round $1.9 billion and makes it the fifth lidar producer this yr to agree a SPAC merger to go public, following on from Velodyne Lidar Inc, Luminar, Innoviz and Aeva.
Ouster sees its digital lidar know-how as having sensible purposes past autonomous automobiles and increasing to areas reminiscent of drones, good cities and robotics, in keeping with firm co-founder and Chief Government Angus Pacala.
“The imaginative and prescient of the longer term that we’re pushing in direction of is lidar on each automobile on earth, each transferring object on Earth and each piece of clever fastened infrastructure on Earth, in the identical method that digital camera know-how has propagated and change into ubiquitous within the final 20 years,” Pacala mentioned in an interview, talking with Colonnade Chief Government Remy Trafelet.
Reuters had reported earlier that Ouster and Colonnade had been nearing a merger settlement.
SPACs like Colonnade are more and more fashionable funding automobiles which increase funds in an preliminary public providing (IPO) with the intention of shopping for a personal firm. The acquired firm then turns into public as results of the merger and is an alternative choice to the standard IPO course of.
Colonnade raised $200 million in an IPO in August. For the take care of Ouster, Colonnade additionally raised $100 million by way of a personal funding in public fairness, or PIPE, transaction. Traders within the PIPE included Cox Automotive, Fontinalis Companions, and WWJ Enterprises.
General the deal will usher in as much as $300 million in gross proceeds for Ouster.
Ouster, which expects to generate round $19 million in income in 2020, stood out from different corporations within the area that Colonnade had checked out shopping for as a result of its enterprise is already producing income, Trafelet mentioned.
“It isn’t a marketing strategy – they’re promoting actual merchandise to actual prospects proper now,’ he mentioned.
Lidar sensors, which use laser mild pulses to render exact photographs of the atmosphere across the automotive, are seen as important by many automakers to permit increased ranges of driver help proper as much as making them able to self-driving.
5-year-old Ouster had beforehand raised $142 million from non-public market buyers, together with Cox, Silicon Valley Financial institution and Fontinalis, which is co-owned by Ford Motor Government Chairman Invoice Ford Jr.
